OCTOBER 29, 2022 – Today I spent all day surrounded by nature in all its glory. The experience was singularly restorative. As I entered the great outdoors, just before dawn, a bald eagle glided by along our shoreline—omen of a good day. The dawn seemed to continue exactly where dusk had left off yesterday: a pastel-colored sky, a light breeze skimming across the lake to sing in the pine and dance with the leaves.
I hiked eastward along the woodland path that I’ve walked 10,000 times. On each occasion I see something new or . . . something old in a new light. The trek is like walking through a familiar art museum where the lighting on the permanent collections is constantly changing and where new exhibitions always tantalize. This refreshing walk reminded me it was time to get to work—after a hearty breakfast and java liberally supplemented with Ovaltine, whipped cream, and cinnamon.
“Work” was my annual bud-capping project—stapling a 4” x 6” piece of scrap paper to the leader of each white pine sapling in my “tree garden.” This is to prevent deer from eating leader buds, robbing the trees of vertical growth the following spring. Although I’d developed new methods to expedite the process, work is still arduous, since each tree is different in height, leader size, needle density, and accessibility. By the time my hands were too sore to continue (six hours), I’d capped 450 trees—using a total of 1,350 staples.
Given all for which I’m so grateful, this year’s project has special meaning—last winter I’d worried that my illness and treatment would preclude me, perhaps ever again, from tending the thousands of white pine seedlings and saplings in the “tree garden.” Today I needed no reminder of my good fortune, but among the 1,200 bud caps that I’d cut from a stash of scrap paper were sections of after-visit printouts I’d saved from scores of medical appointments since January 3. On some sections I’d see my vitals; on other paper I’d see parts of medication lists; on one bud-cap I saw a portion of my oncologist’s hand-drawn graphs of my projected “years in the clear” with and without undergoing an autologous stem cell transplant.
This reminder of my mortality tied directly to the mission at hand: tending young trees that I hope will become old giants keeping watch over this land long after my time. I imagined myself as a medical worker vaccinating people against specific harm, just as countless healthcare workers took blood samples, gave me injections, and otherwise administered my cancer treatment. Now, it seemed, each tree was my patient of a sort. Each had entrusted me to its care. And just as each of my caregivers had bonded with me, I was now bonding with each of these trees.
As the sun slid behind the ridge bordering the “tree garden,” I marveled at planet earth and the integration of life, from the tiniest of microbes to the Leviathans of the forest and . . . among us humans in our ever increasing interdependence.
I’ve always found refuge and rejuvenation while hiking in the woods. Today, my time among the trees reminded of the special bond that each of us has—wittingly or unwittingly—with nature and with one another.
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© 2022 by Eric Nilsson
